Lakers' Dwight Howard Receives 1 Vote for 2020 NBA 6th-Man of Year Award

Dwight Howard's second stint with the Los Angeles Lakers has gone considerably better than his first—albeit in a much more limited role.

No longer the star player he was when he joined the team for an ill-fated 2012-13 season, the center has carved out a solid spot in the rotation with 18.9 minutes per game off the bench. 

That resurgence convinced at least one person to give Howard a third-place vote for Sixth Man of the Year. 

Los Angeles Clippers forward Montrezl Harrell won the award in a relative landslide, gaining 58 first-place votes and 34 second-place votes en route to 397 total points. Oklahoma City's Dennis Schroder finished second with 328 points. 

Howard came in last with just the one vote after averaging 7.5 points and 7.3 rebounds over the regular season. 

Harrell, meanwhile, averaged 18.6 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Clippers. 

George Hill (9.4 points per game) was the only player besides Howard to receive a vote despite averaging fewer than 10 points per game. 

That's not to say Howard didn't have a noteworthy season. 

A stretch in mid-January saw the 34-year-old average 10.5 points and 11.7 rebounds in 22.7 minutes per game over a 10-game stretch. But that spurt probably wasn't enough to justify Howard's inclusion in this year's voting. 

Basketball Reference has Howard's win share at 5.4 this season—the lowest in his career when playing at least 60 games. Harrell, for comparison, finished with a win share of 7.0. 

Voters only took into account games played before the NBA went on hiatus in mid-March and did not include any seeding games inside the NBA bubble. That didn't seem to help or hurt Howard's case. 

Regardless, Howard is still as accomplished a player in the regular season as the NBA has seen in recent memory. The eight-time All-Star has been named Defensive Player of the Year three times, earned five All-Defensive NBA nods and claimed five rebounding titles and two block titles. 

His storied career could have a few more awards in store as the Lakers start the second round of the playoffs on Friday against the Houston Rockets. There just won't be an individual accolade hanging on his shelf in 2020.